David Mark Morrissey

David Mark Morrissey (born 21 June 1964) is an English actor, director, producer and screenwriter. At the age of 18, he was cast in the television series One Summer (1983). After making One Summer, Morrissey attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then acted with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre for four years. Throughout the 1990s, Morrissey often portrayed policemen and soldiers, though he took other roles such as Bradley Headstone in Our Mutual Friend (1998) and Christopher Finzi in Hilary and Jackie (1998). More film parts followed, including roles in Some Voices (2000) and Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001), before he played the critically acclaimed roles of Stephen Collins in State of Play (2003) and Gordon Brown in The Deal (2003). The former earned him a Best Actor nomination at the British Academy Television Awards and the latter won him a Best Actor award from the Royal Television Society.[2] In the years following those films, he had roles in Sense and Sensibility (2008), Red Riding (2009), Nowhere Boy (2009) and Centurion (2010) and produced and starred in the crime drama Thorne (2010). Morrissey returned to the stage in 2008 for a run of Neil LaBute's In a Dark Dark House and played the title role in the Liverpool Everyman's production of Macbeth in 2011. He then starred in the British crime film Blitz, playing a morally dubious reporter in contact with the eponymous cop killer. The following year, he portrayed the Governor in AMC television series The Walking Dead as a series regular in the third and fourth seasons and the fifth season in a guest role. The British Film Institute describes Morrissey as being considered "one of the most versatile English actors of his generation",[3] and he is noted for his meticulous preparation for and research into the roles he plays.[4][5][6] Morrissey has directed short films and the television dramas Sweet Revenge (2001) and Passer By (2004). His feature debut, Don't Worry About Me, premiered at the 2009 London Film Festival and was broadcast on BBC television in March 2010. In 2014 he appeared in The 7.39, another television drama. Morrissey was awarded an honorary doctorate by Edge Hill University in July 2016.

Morrissey was born in the Kensington area of Liverpool, the son of Joe, a cobbler, and Joan, who worked for Littlewoods. He was their fourth child, following brothers Tony and Paul, and sister Karen Lane. The family lived at 45 Seldon Street, in the Kensington district of Liverpool. For National Museums Liverpool's Eight Hundred Lives project, Morrissey wrote that the house had been in his family since around the turn of the 20th century. His grandmother had been married there and his mother was born there. In 1971, the family moved to a larger, modern house on the new estates at Knotty Ash, and Seldon Street was later demolished. As a child, Morrissey was greatly interested in film, television and Gene Kelly musicals. After seeing a broadcast of Kes on television, he decided to become an actor. At his primary school, St Margaret Mary's School, he was encouraged by a teacher named Miss Keller, who cast him as the Scarecrow in a school production adapted from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz when he was 11 years old. Keller left the school soon after, leaving Morrissey without encouragement. His secondary school, De La Salle School, had no drama classes and was the sort of place where Morrissey thought the fear of bullying dissuaded pupils from participating in lessons. On the advice of a cousin, Morrissey joined the Everyman Youth Theatre. For the first couple of weeks, he was quite shy and did not join in the workshops. When he eventually participated, he appeared in the youth theatre's production of Fighting Chance, a play about the riots in Liverpool. He went to the theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. By the age of 14, Morrissey was one of two youth theatre members who sat on the board of the Everyman Theatre. Ian Hart, with whom he had been friends since the age of five, was one of his contemporaries, as were Mark and Stephen McGann and Cathy Tyson. Morrissey became friends with the McGann brothers, who introduced him to their brother Paul when Paul was on a break from studies at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). When Morrissey was 15 years old, his father developed a terminal blood disorder. He was ill for some time and eventually died of a haemorrhage at the age of 54 in the family home. After leaving school at the age of 16, Morrissey joined a Wolverhampton theatre company, where he worked on sets and costumes.

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